Russian Disinformation Attacks on Elections: Lessons from Europe - Malign Tactic of Attacks on Democratic Elections, Investigative Journalism to Expose Putin's Interference, Dividing Western Nations

This hearing report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Committee chairman Keating noted:

The list of threats to our elections are numerous, and it is our job to address the weaknesses with the utmost haste and diligence. Our intelligence community is united in its findings that the U.S. will once again face Russian threats to our elections and our democratic process, and other countries could indeed follow suit. We know countries like China are already stepping up disinformation efforts on their own.

Today's hearing is on Russia's attacks on democratic elections through targeted disinformation campaigns and the takeaways from Europe where this activity has been accelerating for years. It is on what the EU and the European countries are doing themselves, what has been effective, what has not been, lessons learned. The United States awoke to the threat from Russian disinformation as a result of the interference in the 2016 Presidential elections. Yet this malign tactic is nothing new for our allies and partners in Europe who have experienced disinformation campaigns since the time of the Soviet Union.

Based on this experience and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Finland put in place a whole government strategy to combat Russian disinformation and increase the resiliency of its population against these attacks. We are lucky today to be joined by Ms. Jessikka Aro, who is a journalist from Finland and has reported extensively on this topic. And while it was rescinded under questionable circumstances, she would have received an International Women of Courage award earlier this year for her work exposing the network of pro-Kremlin trolls linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency, a Russian institution which, as we all know, was heavily involved in the 2016 Russian interference in our election. That was detailed in part one of the Special Counsel Mueller report.

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.